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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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It has happened. The transgender trend has hit close to home, with a close relative now insisting that we call his five-year-old, penis-having child a "girl." I have had a couple of conversations with the dad, and he repeated of the common transgender talking points. He was at least open to conversation. He did not seem to have been exposed to counter-arguments or to have thought through what he was doing. So I am writing the dad a very long email. Much of the email is quotes from desisters, excerpts from news stories, and reviews of the studies. But I thought I'd share with this forum some of the theory portions that I wrote. Maybe you will find it informative, or maybe you can help strengthen my writing. This is written under a throwaway, names and details are changed to protect the guilty and innocent.

Why biological sex and not 'gender identity' matters for norms, culture and language

When we last talked, I said it was important at this age to correct Skylar about his gender even as a five-year-old, because even at this point it is the role of a parent to guiding him to be a man. You replied that you don't want to raise kids to conform to stereotypes.

Now I don't feel any need to raise a boy to like whiskey and pickup trucks, or to raise a girl to like Barbie dolls. In fact, when first buying clothes for my daughter Jessica I was moderately peeved there were so few unisex options. I wanted to buy neutral clothes to save money for reuse with any future boy.

But there are essential sex differences, rooted in the basic biology of sex, that impact norms and culture around sex.

The most important is that women have the potential to make men immortal. For tens of millions of years of mammalian evolution, the pregnancy and nursing process has been the expensive part of reproduction. Women are the reproduction bottleneck. Much flows from this basic difference.

For a woman, simply acting pretty, helpful, and caring is a viable strategy for having a great life. She can find a man who will become attached to her and provide her all she needs. Note: this is not necessarily the optimal strategy, but it is a viable one. I don't want Jessica to be a princess. Some training in hard work, getting her fingernails dirty, and callouses on her fingers is good ... But she should also know how to be charming and cute and pretty because that will in fact get a girl far in life.)

For men, this is not a viable strategy. Men must develop strength and competencies.

I'm going to paraphrase a passage I found a while ago that really resonated with me:

The biggest difference between men and women is that when you're a man, the absolute indifference of the universe towards you is the norm, it will only care when you make it care, and only for brief moments. To women this is almost Lovecraftian horror they can't conceive of. Men don't realize that most women can never comprehend this because it's just too horrifying to the female psychology. Women live their entire lives knowing people care about them, they take it for granted, it's the universal constant norm for 95 percent of women. We care about them as children because humans generally care about the happiness and suffering of all children. Most women are pleasing to look at, so we look at them. When women are ugly or annoying, we pay attention to them even if it's negative attention.Even when women are shitty we pay some form of attention to them, people care about annoying women because they are hard to ignore. People care about women in distress or sadness because we just do. We want to save women in danger. This has nothing to do with their achievements, their character, just that they are women. When this constant electromagnetic field of empathy around them weakens a bit, particularly middle aged single women with no children, they talk about how cruel it is to be "invisible"

If you're a man, it's the inverse. The universe and the people in it are a yawning void of indifference, you are responsible for yourself. If you're sad you are expected to buck up, if you are having problems you are expected to fix them. If you are too annoying you will be dismissed, told off, or get your ass kicked. If people care about you it's because you built relationships with them that made you a person they care about. If people admire you it's because you built a reputation, a physique, or an empire. Cries for help from women are almost always answered, cries for help from men rarely are, be they metaphorical or literal. If you're a man, you need to understand that most women cannot understand or grok this. If you're a woman, you should try to comprehend that burden men have.

I'm not even knocking this state of affairs. I don't support the whole "Men should cry more and be more sensitive and raise a fuss" effeminate bullshit. The yawning void of indifference is our burden to bear by virtue of being men, you aren't a man without it. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have confidants to help you. Other men who can relate to this yawning chasm, to the struggles men face. Women can provide comfort and empathy, but most of them won't really and truly intellectually grasp and understand this difference. You should always have fraternal bonds with other men to commiserate over, to share knowledge of similar experiences to help each other overcome obstacles and achieve things. Brotherhood is important, you aren't complete without it.

Thus, raising a boy to be a man means gradually building their power level and gradually teaching them that the world will only care for you if you build something and make something of yourself. Childhood is going to end some day and no one will listen to your whining.

Whereas for a girl, they will hit 18 or 19 and suddenly have massive amounts of power purely on account of who they are. A pretty 20-year-old intern can make the CEO of a billion dollar company stutter and blush merely on account of how she looks. She will get stares and attention from men of all sorts. Thus the job of father in raising a daughter is both protecting her from the men who would prey on her, and also teaching her not to abuse or misuse this sexual power she will have. The father must teach her to leverage the power in goods ways to build a great situation while she is young, because she will lose the power as she gets older.

And in this, Skylar is irrevocably a boy, not a girl. You can already see it in Skylar's face. Men have evolved over a long time a fine sense of distinction between men and women, and almost no person born as biological male, with body parts and facial structure and brain developing under the influence of male hormones, can ever pass a girl. A woman who is by chance infertile still triggers men and woman, to treat her as a woman. A male on cross-sex hormones might fool someone at a surface level, but after any meaningful interaction an uncanny valley effect will be triggered. Other people might go along with it out of "nice", but they won't treat a male-to-female transgender as an actual woman in many of the ways that actually matter.

For a biological male, like Skylar, the test in life will come against other biological males. It will also be biological males who will be his future allies in competing against other groups of men -- whether in fighting, business ventures or being wing-man. Since childhood is the preparation for growing up, it is important from childhood to be socialized as a male, competing and cooperating with other males. Otherwise he will arrive at young adulthood, and the girls he was friends will forget him, as they will be interested in actual masculine guys, and he will not have the experience in relating to other guys as guys.

The second basic difference in male and female is the level of hormesis they can withstand. Growth and improvement in many matters from athletics to chess is getting enough struggle to trigger growth, but not so much that you become just damaged and discouraged. Simply put, boys and men can withstand a much greater deal of physical and psychological trial than girls and women can. The optimal level of training is far different. Physical training that will truly test a young man will destroy a woman's pelvic bone. Criticism that a man needs to be able to handle, will make a woman break down in tears (almost every woman I know has cried at work, very few men I know have).

Now a common refrain is "some girls can handle it, we shouldn't make assumptions." This is anti-knowledge -- we should start with assumption of averages and then be flexible about outliers. Furthermore, nothing I have seen in our kids indicates that we are outliers from the biological sex in terms of stereotypical traits. Nothing I have seen from any of the parents or grandparents either. I think that people commonly underestimate just how big the differences are, possibly because of so many strong female characters that have been added to entirely fictional movies, or because of headlines about some women breaking a sex barrier in some traditionally male line of work.

In reality, The bell curves of physical abilities barely overlap. For instance, in studies of grip strength the average man had a greater grip strength than every single female in the general study population. A 75th percentile male had a greater grip strength than every single elite female athlete in the study.

If you consider both upper body strength, weight, body size, skull structure a typical man punching a woman does not do 25% more damage than vice versa, but something like 1,000% more damage.

(continued in a reply)

The biggest difference between men and women is that when you're a man, the absolute indifference of the universe towards you is the norm

This stuck out to me, despite being tangential to the meat of the actual post, because this sentiment is so commonly expressed online and yet it has always felt alien to my personal experience. I have always felt that people care about me. Not most people of course, but I have always had friends and family that care about me and that I can rely on during a tough time. As far as I can tell, most men that I know personally also have friends and family that care about them. When you say "the universe and the people in it are a yawning void of indifference" do you mean that most men don't have such people they can rely on, who 'care' about them? Or do you mean that people at large, that is strangers, don't care about you? That's true, but I don't think the vast majority of women are 'cared about' by random strangers either. What would it even mean for strangers to care about me? If I got shot on the street some passerby would hopefully call the cops for me (then again there was the CashApp guy last week), but I don't think there's a huge sex difference there. I wouldn't really consider that 'caring' about me. If I started crying on a park bench I suspect no one would stop to ask me what was wrong, and maybe they would for a woman (not a sure thing though, I wouldn't stop for a stranger crying in public, regardless of sex). But that's a marginal kind of scenario and I don't think that's what most people are getting at when they say no one cares about you if you're a man.

I am not sure I would call it complete indifference, but isn't it well known enough that there is a marked difference between the empathy we give men vs women? IIRC it's common for FTM transgender people to comment on how much more hostile the world is. To writ:

A couple of years after my transition, I had a grad student I’d been mentoring. She started coming on to me, stalking me, sending me emails and texts. My adviser and the dean — both women — laughed it off...I had experienced harassment as a female person at another university and they had reacted immediately, sending a police escort with me to and from campus. I felt like if I had still been in my old body I would have gotten a lot more support.

 

What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.

(And isn't the quote below revealing?)

My ability to empathize has grown exponentially [after transitioning], because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations. Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives.

(There were other anecdotes I recall, e.g. a trans man quipping about how he learned that people were much more lenient to women talking shit than men, and that he quickly got called aside to talk about how he was acting inappropriately once he started passing - even though nothing had actually changed in behaviour; but the WaPo article was the first one I found and it seems good enough to illustrate my point.)

Not to mention the actual litany of things that we do privilege women over men for, from prison sentencing to divorce and custody to education, the complete etc etc. Even most of the examples used in the trans rights fight is one group trying to gatekeep womanhood vs another group of self-described women wanting privileges available for women.

My personal experience is that when I try to destress with people (e.g. venting about an 80 hour workweek, or a crappy boss) off work is that - yes, there will be friends and family to empathise, but you get a much higher incidence of "dude not our problem" and "stop whining", as well as a general presumption that I'll be fine and it's not serious, compared to women - who people feel more obliged to reassure and to take action on behalf of.

On the more absurd side, there are things like that youtube video "experiment" (yes, n=1, but you get the point) on public violence where the male-on-female violence got bystanders to stop the altercation/call the police immediately, but reversing the roles lead to people cheering for the woman beating the man and sometimes joining in!

It's an effect strong enough that we call it the "women-are-wonderful effect" (or part of it) and discuss how it's benevolent sexism; but we don't call the perception of competence or increased expectations (e.g. with regards to life success) put on men "benevolent sexism", do we? And isn't that itself a bit suggestive of how we're more receptive towards Women's Issues? (I don't claim to be immune from this either!)

If I started crying on a park bench I suspect no one would stop to ask me what was wrong, and maybe they would for a woman (not a sure thing though, I wouldn't stop for a stranger crying in public, regardless of sex). But that's a marginal kind of scenario and I don't think that's what most people are getting at when they say no one cares about you if you're a man.

Is that really a "marginal scenario" (with the implication that it's not part of a larger trend of scenarios that would impact men)?

(wow didn't realise I didn't actually post the link)

I am not sure I would call it complete indifference, but isn't it well known enough that there is a marked difference between the empathy we give men vs women?

I don't disagree that if all we know about a person is their sex we might be inclined to start a woman off with more "empathy points" than a man, but the idea that it's a massive yawning gulf to the point that could it could be compared to a "Lovecraftian horror story" strikes me as absurd hyperbole.

What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.

This is what I wonder about. I suppose I wouldn't know for sure, because I've never been a woman. But...when I'm out and about in public, everyone else always seems pretty friendly. People smile at me, if I make a reasonable request of a total stranger ("can you hand me that," "can I take this chair," "can you break a fifty," etc.) it's usually granted, if I'm carrying stuff and drop some things usually someone will stop to help me pick it up. I guess I'm just not sure what else could really be expected of people you don't know in a public place. What are they doing for women that they aren't doing for me?

People smile at me, if I make a reasonable request of a total stranger ("can you hand me that," "can I take this chair," "can you break a fifty," etc.) it's usually granted, if I'm carrying stuff and drop some things usually someone will stop to help me pick it up.

I think it shows up more when making more substantial requests, like finding another person who will listen to you vent, or help you move. Or inviting people to your birthday party and hoping people will show up. Interrupting someone at a coffeeshop or party and asking for advice. Also, if there is a group, and the woman has some complaints about the group, her complaints will by default be taken more seriously. All these disparities are particularly large when comparing an attractive women, and unattractive men.

These disparities are partly hidden because most men heave learned over the course of life they need to put in the work and so already compensate for this. Men do find friends, and people to help them move, and go to their birthday parties, but they had to put in the work to bring value to establish these relationships. It's only when you step back and imagine the counter-factual, "Would I be putting up with this behavior if they were an unattractive guy? etc." that you see the difference.